How can I get more out of @Agendas?

10-14-2013, 04:33 AM

Hi

I find I'm not using Agenda lists effectively. I have one for each of my team, but I forget to look at Agenda lists for the guys I speak to frequently day-to-day. They work well for less frequent meetings eg my monthly meetings with my accountant, but not day-to-day.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could work differently?

I tend to put things on an Agenda when I'd like or need to talk about them, but they're not time sensitive. If they're time sensitive I create a specific task in my @office list.

I don't recall ever having used @Agenda or at least not having ever used it effectively.

As I recall, use of the NA lists is for items that you need to be reminded of that do *not* already have some other method of reminding you, e.g., by their physical presence in your "environment."

You and I handle these situations similarly.

If I need to talk to Ken about my red-pen markups on a paper copy of his latest report, I leave it on my not-too-cluttered desk, where its mere presence is a reminder to hold that conversation sometime today. (I probably also already have an NA under @Work to "Review Ken's report.")

So, do what works and what you're comfortable with. It makes no sense to create a list and populate it with things to get done if, for whatever reason, it's not going to serve its purpose of getting you to get things done.

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Here's what we say about the Agenda lists in our Setup Guides, if this helps:

Agenda lists hold the reminders for items to discuss with people and in meetings.

These lists tracks the topics and agenda items for people you interact with regularly. For example, if you have a standing meeting with a particular team, and want to capture agenda items to bring up at the next meeting, this is the place to capture them. The Agenda list is not for tracking next actions that you need to take related to that person or team (for example, a call you need to make to that person, which would instead go on your “Calls” list.) Once you’re on the call, you may refer to the Agenda list for that person, but it’s the Calls list that is triggering the action to make the phone call, not Agendas.

You could easily have half a dozen people and meetings that you are tracking this way—your direct reports, your boss, your assistant, your spouse, the weekly staff meeting, the monthly board meeting, etc.

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I use "people tags" (in my app) - serving a similar purpose as an Agenda list for each person. (And I have tags for regular contexts as well; everything actionable on one consolidated Next list, filterable by tag).

Often enough, when I bump into somebody or am speaking with someone on the phone, I remember to check (filter) for tasks that require this person's assistance/presence. It works well. I also use more generic tags for "types of people", e.g. Supplier, Client etc for less frequent contacts.

If the Agenda items are for a particular meeting, I put them as comment lines in a task that represents the meeting itself.

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Agendas hasn't really worked for me, although that's probably just down to me not being disciplined enough to check regularly. I've found that putting the task in the location context where I'll see the contact works better as I'm going to be checking that regularly anyway.